The rise in popularity and use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has attracted much attention recently. We have recently seen a major uptick in drone use by private companies. Drones have been regulated for some time through federal aviation regulations, but the accessibility of drone technology has led Transport Canada (TC) to consider revisiting the regulations to ensure they keep pace with current interest and use.

The B.C. government plans to toughen up the laws prohibiting the operation of drones near wildfires, after the unmanned aircraft grounded air tankers and helicopters that should have been fighting two forest fires earlier this summer.

I took a day off from the continuing hunt for Amazon’s secret Canadian drone testing facility for a reality check. That would be the opportunity to attend a recent Vancouver Entrepreneur Forum on the subject of UAVs

The Laflamme Aero Inc. company has announced the launch of a $2.3 million project for the development and the demonstration of a 300 kg. unmanned helicopter called the LX300. This new aircraft will become one of the largest civil unmanned aerial vehicule (UAV) to be commercialized in the world. The two-and-a-half-year project will culminate in demonstration flights by 2017. This project is funded in part by the Consortium for Aerospace Research and Innovation in Canada (CARIC).

After getting a glimpse of the future through robot and drone
demonstrations at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace
Studies (UTIAS), Minister of State Ed Holder made a funding announcement
Wednesday, May 20 to further support university training programs.

Jeff Bezos set the world on its ear in December 2013 when he coyly asked
Charlie Rose of CBS’ 60 Minutes if he would like to see something.
Replying in the affirmative, Rose was then led into the depths of
Amazon’s very own skunkworks and thus Amazon’s Prime Air drone program
was unveiled to the world.

In April, I participated in the UAV Working Group, where members of the
UAV community and their Association (Unmanned Systems Canada) met with
other stakeholders and Transport Canada (TC) to discuss the future of
UAV operations in Canada – but with a special emphasis on Commercial
Beyond Line-of-Sight (BLOS) operations for UAVs under 25 kg, referred to
as Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS).

May 7, 2015, Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) has announced a partnership with industry to explore the next
steps in unmanned aircraft operations beyond the type of operations the
agency proposed in the draft small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) rule
it published in February.

May 7, 2015, Halifax - The camera rises high into the air and a sweeping scene of the Bedford
Basin comes into view. Against the coastal odds, it’s a clear day, as
boats pull in and out of Halifax harbour along the water.

May 5, 2015, Hunt Valley, Md. - Textron Systems Support Solutions has announced the introduction of its new unmanned systems training course catalog. Building on the company's decades of experience and millions of service hours devoted to training and deploying skilled unmanned systems operators and maintainers around the world, this new catalog offers a comprehensive range of unmanned systems coursework.

April 29, 2015, Nepal - From the ground in Nepal, the chaos would have been immediate and terrifying. From the skies above, the scope of the tragedy came into sharper focus after Saturday's 7.8-magnitude quake
— a vast disaster zone with a death toll that has since climbed past
4,600 and turned UNESCO heritage sites such as the Dharahara Tower Hindu
shrine into rubble.

April 27, 2015, Seattle, Wa. - Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are making surveying of landscapes, buildings, etc. so much easier and more cost-effective that it is inevitable that there will be an explosion in this activity. This will create massive amounts of data that will need to be managed and stored efficiently, as Steinar Sande, CEO of Raima explores.